One of my favorite bits of life advice comes from Mark Cuban. A couple of years ago, Business Insider wrote a brief piece on his view that surprisingly few people are willing to put in the effort to gain a knowledge advantage in their fields. I remember it to this day, because it is consistent with much of my experience in the working world.
“I remember going into customer meetings or talking to people in the industry and tossing out tidbits about software or hardware,” he writes. “Features that worked, bugs in the software. All things I had read. I expected the ongoing response of: ‘Oh yeah, I read that too in such-and-such.’ That’s not what happened. They hadn’t read it then, and they still haven’t started reading it.”
Cuban says that despite a minimal background in computers, he was outperforming so-called experts in the field simply because he put time and effort in. It’s why, he writes, he still allocates a chunk of his day to reading whatever he can to gain an edge in the businesses he’s involved in.
“Most people won’t put in the time to get a knowledge advantage,” he writes.
Another quote that sticks in my head along these lines (I don’t recall exactly where I heard this, and it’s possible I’ve fused a couple different quotes together):
“If you aren’t passionate about what you’re doing, don’t ever make the mistake of competing with someone who is. You will lose every time.”